R is an excellent tool for producing plots, particularly where we
wish to then present these plots within other documents, and require
the best quality. That, is, we generate static plots based on our
exploration by issuing commands to R through the R
Console, or through Rattle. There is little opportunity
in R to interact with a plot once it has been displayed.

Being able to easily interact with a plot can add significantly to the
efficiency of our data exploration and lead to the discovery of
interesting and important patterns and relationships. A data miner
exhibits a sophisticated skill in dynamically interacting with the
visualisations of data to provide insights. The software supports
this, but the true insights come from the skill of the data miner. We
must take time to explore our data, to identify relationships and
insights.

Rattle provides access to two very powerful R packages for
interactive data analysis: latticist
and
rggobi. These can be accessed through the
Interactive option of the Explore tab
(Figure 7.1). We introduce each
here. Do note that each application has much more functionality than
can be covered here, and indeed, rggobi
has its own book
(, ).